Our Hands Are Pale as Milk

When the rakish poet Percy Bysshe Shelley charms his way into the sheltered lives of three sisters, calamity follows. Fanny, the eldest at nineteen, is sent away to recover from her broken heart, while Mary and Claire, both sixteen, run away with the married Shelley. The Poet sees himself as the savior of young women, even as he seals Fanny’s doom, steals Mary’s heart, and offers Claire a nomadic existence. To remain in Percy and Mary’s bright orbit, Claire Clairmont becomes a muse to Shelley, a lover to the great Lord Byron, and a witness to Mary’s creation of Frankenstein. And yet, once pregnant with Byron’s child, Claire has no voice in determining her own future. In Our Hands Are Pale as Milk, Claire at last relates her story of love and suffering at the hands of poets Shelley and Byron. Hers is a cautionary tale for all women who fall in love.